Palestine’s PLO calls to revoke recognition of Israel

RAMALLAH: The Palestinian Liberation Organisation’s (PLO) second highest decision-making body called to suspend recognition of Israel until the latter recognises a state of Palestine, in a decision that could upend nearly 25 years of formal relations between the two governments.

Salim Zanoun, chairman of the PLO Central Council, called on the PLO executive committee – the highest ranking Palestinian executive committee – to revoke recognition of Israel until it recognises a Palestinian state, stops settlement building, and rescinds the Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem.

It is unclear if Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will heed the Central Council’s call as he ignored their 2015 demand to cancel security co-ordination with Israel. The Central Council also renewed its 2015 demand to cancel Israeli-Palestinian security co-ordination and called to withdraw from the Paris Protocol, an agreement that governs the two governments economic relationship.

The PLO was meeting in Ramallah to announce a strategy in the face of US President Donald Trump’s move to recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s captial.

The PLO recognised Israel as part of the US-brokered 1993 Oslo Accords, which paved the way for establishing Abbas’s Palestinian Authority government.

However, Trump’s Jerusalem move upended decades of US policy towards the divided city and Abbas has since rejected any US-led Israeli-Palestinian peace effort.